HOLLYWOOD -- Fox led off the broadcast network portion of the July Television Critics Association TV tour Monday with a first so far: A new prime time broadcast network series we'd actually seen.

The excitement, relief, release and sense of seasonal renewal were palpable.

The earlier writers strike had mucked up the networks' developmental pipeline, and very few new pilots had been presented for pre-tour preview.

The show - a real show! to watch! and talk about endlessly! -- was "Fringe," a new drama from J.J. Abrams, scheduled for a Sept. 9 premier.

Based on the episode screened here for TCA members (and also maybe surreptitiously, maybe calculatedly, streamed online) stars Anna Torv as an FBI agent who gets to solve mysterious stuff.

"The X-Files" was the most frequently repeated reference among the critics, but Abrams mentioned the films of David Cronenberg ("Scanners," "The Fly")and the wild 1980 feature "Altered States" as a few of his touchstones during the formation of "Fringe."

Questions about the density of the tale to be told in "Fringe" were inevitable given Abrams' earlier role in the production of "Alias" and, the Big Kahuna when it comes to frequently baffling TV, "Lost."

"It's funny, I was at my friend Greg Grunberg's house years ago, and he was on 'Alias' and 'Heroes' now," Abrams said during the show's panel interview session. "It turned out it was sort of a
bad day, and I was at his house, and 'Alias' was
on. He put it on, and I was watching, and I
wasn't thinking about it. I watched a few
minutes, and I was so confused.

"Literally, it was impenetrable. I was
like, 'I know I should understand this. I read
the ... who the (bleep) is that guy?'

"Literally, I saw the show from that place, and
'Lost' has ... garnered a certain reputation for being a very complicated show and one you have to watch every episode. 'Fringe' is,
in many ways, an experiment for us, which is, we
believe it is possible to do a show that does have
an overall story and end game, which 'Fringe'
absolutely does.

"We can do a show that has that, so that there's a direction the
show is going and there's an ultimate story that's
being told, but also a show that you don't have to
watch Episodes 1, 2 and 3 to tune in to Episode 4.

"I feel like, especially with 'Alias' -- which by the
way, had the craziest storyline where she was a
good guy working for the bad guy, but the bad guys
were pretending they were good guys -- literally it was definitely a show
that while I so loved working on that show and
miss it, I can see how it was difficult.

"This show is going to have a different sort of
paradigm. Week to week, there will be stories.
So you can tune in and just watch that, but there
will, over the course of seasons and then the
series itself, bigger arcs of stories. So I think
we're trying very diligently to do a show that
doesn't require the kind of insane, absolute
dedication to a series that, if you miss an
episode, you truly have no idea what's going on,
but hopefully you want to see every episode
because they'll be exciting and fun."